Speaker Khatri wants clubs in Mombasa to put up structures

Mombasa is missing out on the goodies that come with football because investment in the sport is low in the county, county assembly speaker Aharub Khatri has said.

"Football is a way of life for professional footballers and rakes in millions of shillings for players. However, in Mombasa, only a few teams give players something to go home with," he said. 

They include Bandari FC who play in the Kenya Premier League and National Super League sides Mombasa Elite and Coastal Heroes.  Others are Kenya Navy, Omax FC and Simba Apparel, who play in the National Division 1 League.

While only Bandari pay salaries, others offer allowances, which are not a guarantee. Khatri urged clubs to put structures in place to help professionalize the sport in the county. 

He was speaking ahead of the second edition of the Speaker’s Cup starting this weekend at Magongo ground with Miritini Ward battling it out with Changamwe Ward. “The final will be on December 16, God willing,” according to Khatri.

He said the Speaker’s Cup is a platform to showcase the talent that youth in the county have.  " We have scouts who will be here to spot talent and eventually place them in special football programmes that will harness their skills in readiness for deployment to more professional sides in the country," he said.

Khatri added: “We have a lot of talent in the estates but few are spotted and nurtured and that is why we have organized this tournament.” 

The speaker said the three-month tournament will keep the youth busy and also help keep them away from other vices like drugs and crime.

“Today, our youth do not have jobs and most of them are idling around. We fear that this idling makes them vulnerable to agents of vices like drugs and crime,” Khatri said.

The tournament has attracted 32 teams and the grand prize will be Sh500,000. Each of the 30 wards in Mombasa will produce a team and two other teams will be formed by the Mombasa county assembly and the Mombasa executive.

The teams will be pooled in groups of four, with each team in a group playing three matches. The top two will then proceed to the round of 16, where the knock-out stage will begin.

Likoni MCA Athman Mwamwiri said the tournament will also allow the MCAs to interact more with the youth from their wards and in the process help grasp a deeper perspective of the problems they face in society.